roses are red, violets are blue. Dang I have cute grandkids.

Homemade Valentines for Maddie and Faye. Because they are such wild lil' monkeys and ld and I are bananas over them:)

Five little monkeys, Jumpin' on the bed
One fell off and broke his head.


Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
"No more monkeys jumpin' on the bed"!


Madds and Faye loved their monkeys and bed, only Maddie thought it was a bed for her. She hasn't quite caught the concept of proportional size.


And a Valentine for Miss Cate, too. When she sleeps over her favorite game to play is Mermaids and Sharks. She's got a whole narrative going. Basically it's trying to keep the mermaid ladies away from the sharks and other mean sea creatures and rescuing them onto the boat/couch. Great fun.

For Cate: an ocean full of love, then. Nothing fishy about it, she's a great catch. Brahahahaha.


Score.




Here's Emmer and Faye in all their chocolate glory. Adorable. I wish I could recline in a giant box of chocolates, too.

its not like lost keys, but still.

Waiting in the check out line at Winco today, a woman tapped me on the shoulder.

Woman: Ma'am. Uh, ma'am excuse me.

Me: Yes?

Woman: Excuse me, but you have a paper banana stuck to your butt.

Me: (Excitedly) Oh! I was looking for that all morning. Thank you so much. I am so happy I didn't lose it.

Woman: You lost your paper banana?

(She was looking at me expectantly. I thought about it for a sec. Nah, too much to explain).

Me: Don't ask.

habits. memories.

So it's habits and memories that are important. That's true for character development and relationships as well, I think. Really about all we can give our children and ourselves are these: good habits and good memories. The one takes consistency and the other planning and both require being pleasant in the doing. He he he.

Confirmed again that experiences, in the form of habits or memories, shape us. Here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181351486558984.html

First, experience shapes the brain. People often think that if some ability is located in a particular part of the brain, that must mean that it's "hard-wired" and inflexible. But, in fact, the brain is so powerful precisely because it is so sensitive to experience. It's as true to say that our experience of controlling our impulses make the prefrontal cortex develop as it is to say that prefrontal development makes us better at controlling our impulses. Our social and cultural life shapes our biology.

Second, development plays a crucial role in explaining human nature. The old "evolutionary psychology" picture was that genes were directly responsible for some particular pattern of adult behavior—a "module." In fact, there is more and more evidence that genes are just the first step in complex developmental sequences, cascades of interactions between organism and environment, and that those developmental processes shape the adult brain. Even small changes in developmental timing can lead to big changes in who we become.

elephant baby shower

Kenz threw a shower for Brig's cousin last week. A few pics, then.



She let me help with the cake. The first one fell apart due to Cate's being 3 years old. So this is the second one. Yup, it's sculpted fondant on a buttercream frosting. Fondant is too gross to actually eat, imho.


One of the baby games. It's an old standby, identify the person from their baby pic.


It's been done a lot, so she shook things up a bit.

A bit harder now. Heh heh. The way she played it was cute, too. Guests had to don disguises, also. Ask her for deets.

Oh. And an elephant made out of sewn receiving blankets. Don't laugh. It's creative.


She had the guests sign a children's book. You can see it displayed above.


To use the vernacular of the day, she's amaze-balls.

'ya think?

January has been holding true to itself, it's a l-o-n-g, hunker-down month, filled with new projects, goals and reading.
I'm offering no commentary on how these links synch up for me today, they just do.

...learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about "the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master".

Later:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
--David Foster Wallace

His whole address found here:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words


And then this. T&S linked to this as a pdf. Well worth it:
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/universal-intellectual-standards/527

More by the same Linda:
The single most important reason for deliberately evaluating your own thinking is that thinking, left to itself, just cannot be trusted. Everyone thinks, but everyone doesn’t think well. And no one thinks well all of the time. 

It is important to recognise that people already do evaluate their thinking. But they often fail to use intellectual standards to do so. In other words, they often fail to clarify their thinking, and to make sure it is accurate, logical, relevant, significant, broad, deep and fair (just to name a few intellectual standards).

http://www.hr-matters.info/feat2011/2011.jul.BecomingACriticOfYourOwnThinking.htm

i'm not just sagging and bagging. I'm also stooping and drooping. Sigh.

My eye doctor has been talking to me seriously about having Lasix surgery done to my eyes. For the past couple of years he has reminded me of the benefits, particularly since my near vision has become less and less. Since my distance vision is horrible, it would be nice to be able to see at some level. So this is the year ld and I decided to just do it. Only one problem. As I have aged my right eye has begun to droop. Official term: ptosis. It's caused by long term contact lens usage and by genetics. It's bugged me that I look so goofy but what can you do? As dad used to say, "I'm degenerating right on schedule."

Grandma Busby, my great-grandmother, had this. And in the same right eye, too. See? You can tell.
When I was a very little girl, her droopy eye frightened me and I never wanted to be around her. I feel bad now, because my mother would always scold me and want me to kiss and hug her. I would but I ran away as fast as I could. When you are small aging adults and their old bodies are not really understood.

Anyway, my eye doctor said before the Lasix can be done I have to fix my droopy eye. Today I met with an eye surgeon who confirmed there is a definite medical reason to repair my eye as the ptosis has affected my peripheral vision.

As much as I hate the idea of doing any nipping and tucking, I am happy at the prospects of not scaring off my grandchildren. Being able to see will be nice, too.

wedding pics. pt 1

I loved the day. A sweet celebration for two sweet people. More pics to come.

curlin' up

Cate and Maddie slept over for a Grandy over nighter, Meghan came down with flu/food poisoning? yesterday and the tree needs to come down today. We are settling back into a somewhat slower paced routine. Which means my ipad came out of its month long retirement and is getting some needed use. ld loaded this http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Habit-Learn-Use-Life/dp/0743235274/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 onto it. Some marked passages that resonate:

p. 8
Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. That's the missing element in the popular portrait of Mozart. Certainly, he had a gift that set him apart from others. He was the most complete musician imaginable, one who wrote for all instruments in all combinations, and no one has written greater music for the human voice. Still, few people, even those hugely gifted, are capable of the application and focus that Mozart displayed throughout his short life.

p. 39
I don't mean to get too caught up in observational focal length. It's one facet of many that makes up an artist's creative identity. Yet once you see it, you begin to notice how it defines all the artists you admire. The sweeping themes of Mahler's symphonies are the work of a composer with a wide vision. He sees grand architecture from a distance. Contrast that with a miniaturist like Satie, whose delicate compositions reveal a man in love with detail. (It's only the giants like Bach, Cézanne, and Shakespeare who could work in many focal lengths.)

p. 64
Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we're experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember, it's how we interpret -- for ourselves and others.

p. 101
If you're like me, reading is your first line of defense against an empty head. It's how you learned as a child. It's how you absorb difficult information. It's how you keep your mind disciplined. If you monitor your reading assiduously, it's even how you grade your brain's conditioning; like an athlete in training, the more you read, the more mentally fit you feel. It doesn't matter if it's a book, magazine, newspaper, billboard, instruction manual, or cereal box -- reading generates ideas, because you're literally filling your head with ideas and letting your imagination filter them for something useful. If I stopped reading, I'd stop thinking. It's that simple.

p. 165
Confidence is a trait that has to be learned honestly and refreshed constantly; you have to work as hard to protect your skills as you did to develop them. This means vigilant practice and excellent practice habits. You've heard the phrase "Practice makes perfect"? Not true. Perfect practice makes perfect. The one thing that creative souls around the world have in common is that they have to practice to maintain their skills. Art is a vast democracy of habit.

things have slowed down. for now.

Emerson came home Christmas Eve. Christmas Day arrived with every single present wrapped. Ha! The next day we pulled off the wedding. Haven't got the pics back yet, will post them when available. Here are a few of the bridal shots.




Thanks fam for all your support, it was lovely having you share the day with us. Jiao had JLW snap this pic right as they were ready to leave. Love this girl.

I look like a big pink marshmallow here and this was even before I started snarfing leftover wedding cake.

arnett wimmens

Something really tender about a family shower. Women folk coming together to welcome a new bride with gifts, good wishes and love. Thanks to the Larry Arnett gals for hosting such a nice evening. Ladies, you are awesome and so appreciated.


Potato leek soup, artichoke dip, french bread, lemonade cupcakes. Oh. My.


Good food, good company. The evening could not have been nicer.


Chatting it up.


Lovely Jiao.


Good times. Love, love the wimmen in this family.

the days are long but the years are short

Oh, I am living through an emotional time. Yes, yes. I am. I am filled with worry for those I love and wish I could make everything better.

When Meghan returns from her morning hospital visit and Faye is down for her morning nap, I often plop down beside her while she does her pumping. We visit and talk, mostly about her frustration that Emerson is not yet home. She vents and cries. I vent and cry. It is one of the tender highlights of this crazy time we are all living through.

I've explained, but she already knows, that a little perspective and patience is helpful in times like these. It is a painful lesson to learn to surrender to events, to learn to go with the flow. I have not provided a very good example. At times, I still think I control the universe.

Anyway. How to turn over our heart worry? How to do that exactly?
Interestingly, this morning while thinking deeply about all my worries and concerns I came across a blog post I had started last year. I never finished it, but it fits my mood today.

Here. From deep in my computer files:

The title of my blog “Fighting Against What Is” refers to some pop psychology guru (I can’t even remember the name) who gave this saying as the definition of stress. “That’s what stress is”, this wise person said, “it’s fighting against what is”. That was memorable to me because it described/describes exactly how I find myself most of the time. I rant and rail and rave, whine and complain and cause myself untold misery by fighting against the circumstances and events of my life.

Lately I have been reading the teachings and philosophy of Eckhart Tolle. I know, I know Oprah loves him. That alone gives me cause for pause. Still. Even though I don’t agree with everything (okay a lot) of what he espouses there are kernels of wisdom in his teachings. I have been giving it a lot of thought and trying to make it all jive with my understanding of the plan of salvation and restored teachings. Which means I have to toss out what is bunk. But his thoughts about mental noise and pain bodies, while all very new agey, are true I think.

"To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.
See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness".

This, too:
"Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists. Then the implication, of course, is there is another way of dealing with things, with situations. Make peace with it. And then action - Take action. The action then comes out of a different state of consciousness. The action comes out of presence. Presence. It’s no longer reaction. It comes out of presence and not out of you being defensive about it. And the action is much more powerful and effective when it’s not defensive and not negative".

I relate to this, too:
"Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best-better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His. We can grow in faith only if we are willing to wait patiently for God's purposes and patterns to unfold in our lives, on His timetable."
--Elder Neal A. Maxwell, "Patience", Ensign, Oct. 1980, 28

Yeah. Ideas to chew on. Patience, surrendering to what is. Hard stuff. But as my mother used to frequently say, 'This too shall pass'.

only 23 shopping days left! Eek. only 24 days until the blessed nuptials! Yikes.

Flowers, menus, wedding dress. Check. GAH! My head is swimming.

And Christmas? What's that? Christmas will come whether I feel ready or not.

I helped Meghan set up her tree yesterday. Faye loved the lights. When I came back in the evening to sit with her, Megs told me that for about a half hour or so she and Faye lay close to the tree with pillows, just gazing at its magical brightness. Made me smile. That is something my own children and I did when they were small. I let them grab their pillows and sleep out by the tree.

We are holding up fairly well, people. Our days consist of wedding planning, internet shopping and tending. It's basically helping Megs and helping Jiao and for all the rushing to and fro craziness, it's a sweet time. We are all alive and well and making progress. Everything else pales in comparison.

you are what you learn

Not a Dilbert fan at all, but so loving this:

“You are what you learn. If all you know is how to be a gang member, that’s what you’ll be, at least until you learn something else. If you go to law school, you’ll see the world as a competition. If you study engineering, you’ll start to see the world as a complicated machine that needs tweaking. A person changes at a fundamental level as he or she merges with a particular field of knowledge. If you don’t like who you are, you have the option of learning until you become someone else. There’s almost nothing you can’t learn your way out of. Life is like a jail with an unlocked, heavy door. You’re free the minute you realize the door will open if you simply lean into it.”

-Scott Adams

Yup, yup.

what we had for dinner tonight

Seriously. This girl has got skills.

jiao has a blog

Check it out:
http://jiaonny2.blogspot.com/

name them one by one

My list then. Notice it includes only people this year. Fitting.

*ld. After almost a week of technological frustration, he painstakingly fixed and restored my computer. Voila. Love of my life.
*Jiao - She's here and she is as wonderful as she seems. Really.
*JLW - for being smart enough to marry her.

Also grateful for:
*Sisters in law who come in, muck out, scrub down and shine up. Brothers who show up, stay late, and are there when you need them. Brothers who call repeatedly for updates and to offer support.
*Nieces who bring in dinner, vacuum, text and call on the phone.
*B. Gomer and Keny. They can prep and paint a room quicker than you can say 'Jack Sprat'.
*My Cate, Madeline, and Faye. Gamma loves you. So. Much.
*Kody. For not cowering in the face of trauma.
*Meghan. She's alive and growing stronger. What more can I say?
*Emerson. He's alive and growing stronger. What more can I say?

And so grateful for everyone who joined us in fasting and prayer. It was a gift you gave to Meghan and Emerson, it really was. And it made all the difference.

Today there has been a lot of talk generated by scientific studies and popular media suggesting the value of keeping a gratitude journal, or making a list of things we’re grateful for and that’s not a bad idea.
Whether we write how blessed we are in our journals everyday or not, we should be in the habit of expressing thanks when we pray and also when we come to partake of the sacrament every Sunday. Those are both quiet, reflective times that lend themselves to being spiritually aware. And that’s really what gratitude is - being spiritually aware of our relationship to God, being aware of all He has given us.

The way we become aware is when we pay attention to the details of life and living. Paying attention is therefore the key to gratefulness. Its hard to be thankful when we walk through life unnoticing, unaware, unconnected. We know we are supposed to count our blessings but first we need to see our blessings. Then name our blessings. Then acknowledge our blessings. Then count them.

If we don’t do this, then we run the risk of taking many things for granted.

And then later this:

• In Mosiah 2:19-21 we learn better how we can show our gratitude.
19 And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!

20 I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—

21 I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.”

What King Benjamin is alluding to here I think is that people who live out of gratitude, who pay attention to the good things that come their way, who count their blessings and express their thanks to the Lord daily - these people are also more apt to want to help others.

Living our gratitude does that. If we’re grateful we listen to friends in need, pay our tithing lovingly instead of begrudingly, we serve in callings and also volunteer. If we’re living our gratitude we are less concerned about material goods, less likely to judge others and more concerned about the well being of others. Not only does gratitude feel good, but it causes us to do good.

And then this reminder:
Now comes the challenging part.

We are to feel gratitude not just in the wonderful happenings in our lives but also in times of adversity, trials and afflictions. This is where it really gets hard for some of us.

I don’t know about you but it’s sometimes difficult to express gratitude when we are under stress, yet it is often such situations that permit significant spiritual growth.

This is illustrated especially well in a story related by Elder Marion D. Hanks about a boy and his mother, who knew the value of expressing gratitude:

“I sat at a stake conference where a returned missionary bore his testimony. He had but a short time and he chose to use one idea. He thanked God for a great, humble mother, and gave his reason. He said that as a high school boy, he [had] been sorely tried by the illness and then death of his little sister whom he had loved greatly and who had been the darling of the family, being the last of them. Their father had died. The little girl grew ill, and in spite of prayers and administrations and fasting and much concern, worsened and died in the night. The boy went into his room, locked the door, and sobbed out his broken heart to the walls because he was not willing to do it to the God whom he could not now honestly approach. In his rebellion and anger at a God, if there were one, who would permit such a thing to happen to them, he cried out in rebellion. He said he would never pray again, would never go to church again, and could never have any confidence again in a God who would permit this to happen. And in his immature but sincere sorrow, he made some rather serious covenants with himself. He stayed awake the rest of the night, apprehensive about an experience he anticipated. It was their custom, as it is in so many Latter-day Saint homes, to kneel morning and evening with the children around the mother, to thank God for the goodness of his blessings.

“He waited for that moment, knowing what he had to say, but fearing it. When his mother said, ‘Come, children,’ he said, ‘No.’

“She said, ‘Kneel down, son.’

“He said, ‘No, I will not kneel down, and I will never kneel down again.’

“She said, as I remember his words and I was deeply touched as were we all. ‘Son, you’re the oldest child in this home. You are the only man in the house, and if I ever needed a man, I need one now. You kneel down.’

“He knelt down, still rebellious, but because his mother needed him, and he began for the first time to think in terms of her broken heart and her sorrow. So he knelt, but he said to himself, ‘I wonder what she’s going to thank God for this morning.’ And his mother, knowing as she must have, the questions in his mind and the minds of the other children, taught them the gospel on their knees that morning. She thanked God for what the family knew, for the blessing of eternal ties, for direction and purpose and guidance and convictions as to the future. She thanked God that they had been blessed with this wonderful, angelic child who had brought so much to them and who was to be theirs, always. And out of her mother’s heart, knowing the desperate, critical nature of the moment, taught her own children what there was to thank God for under conditions of such stress.

“As the boy stood... he thanked God for a mother who was a heroine” (Heroism, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year [25 Mar. 1959], 3-4).

This mother’s prayer of gratitude to Heavenly Father was an example to her son and to us. It illustrates how gratitude is a condition of the heart - and if expressed and felt and lived - even at such a high cost as adversity - it can purify our souls, sanctify us and develop in us a celestial character.

President Howard W. Hunter observed: “Life—every life—has a full share of ups and downs. Indeed, we see … many blessings that do not always look or feel like blessings” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1987, 68; or Ensign, Nov. 1987, 54).

On sunny, smooth sailing days I like to think of myself as an optimist. I think I have an advantage over some people. Someone once said that the reason why short people tended to be optimists is because they can only see the part of the glass that is half full, not half empty...

It’s hard to be a full time optimist in our world, though. We are so full of aches and pains, so tired and overworked, so stressed out about time and money, that the glass looms large and to fill it seems nearly impossible. To get up in the morning and to exclaim, "Zippedee do dah! It’s a fine day, bring on the challenges!" seems hokey. Especially when some of us truly struggle with adversity.

I know there are people sitting here today who have been dealt an unfair hand: they or someone they love is suffering from terrible illness, or has sustained a tragic loss, or can't get back on their feet, or can't find work or make ends meet. Their sorrow is real.

But the gospel teaches us that we find the path to gratitude even within our sorrow.

And that is tough. It’s tough because it doesn't let us feel sorry for ourselves, no matter how little we may have or how much we may have lost.

When a person is able to whisper, in the midst of pain and loss, a quiet “Thank you, Heavenly Father” this is where we see the spirit pour down. It's not a matter of giving thanks for the suffering itself exactly, but giving thanks for something that goes deeper than the suffering, giving thanks for the experiences of mortality, all of them. And when we can do that the spirit dwells with us, teaching us and helping us to cope.

To live a life of gratitude does not mean you compare yourself with those who seem less blessed or less fortunate. It isn’t about comparison. In fact, being a grateful person doesn’t spare you from adversity or sadness.

What is true, though, is that a person who lives gratefully will continue to be grateful through the darkest and most trying of times. Gratitude will buoy you up when everything else seems to be falling. It will help you see the good in the midst of tragedy, even when you cannot see any good in suffering. To be able to give thanks in the midst of aching loss is a transforming experience. There’s a wisdom that comes from that kind of attitude and we are blessed with a more open, softer heart and with an outpouring of the spirit.

To live in thanksgiving daily is an attitude that is critical to our spirituality. It is a state of being. The Lord knows this, this is why he stresses its importance.

--excerpts from an old talk I wrote on Gratitude, many moons past.

32 years

more makin' the rounds part 2

Jiao and I rode up to the Chinese market off 90th south in SLC. I could see the relief in her face, they have almost everything there. We bought ingredients for her to cook with, should keep her from starving. She is brave and adventuresome in trying American food but let's face it, familiar foods are such a comfort.

We picked up Faye around noon and headed over to HB and Penee. So it's 2 down, 2 more brothers to go. She already knows quite a bit about my family, JLW has informed her. Let's just say their reputation has preceded them, so no great shocks. he he he

makin' the rounds

Introduced Jiao to the Larry Arnett fam last night. She loved the brownies and ice cream:)


We were planning on visiting HB's family today but Jiao has been having a wee bit trouble adjusting to American food. Our cuisine is so different from what she is used to and her stomach wasn't feeling well this afternoon at all. Trying to remedy that by stocking up on ingredients familiar to her and letting her cook for herself. Everything is so unfamiliar and will take time to adjust.

Jiao is a delightful person and we are so happy she is finally here. Jantzen especially:)

guadium #99,990

As we move through life we collect spiritual experiences that stretch us and sustain us and leave us better equipped to handle whatever else may be thrown at us in mortality. I know this. But once again, like so many other crucibles I have experienced personally, the events from this past week have left me sobered, grateful and in awe.

The Lord hears and answers prayers and we’re blessed beyond anything if we know and experience this. Routinely my prayers include gratitude and acknowledgement and mindfulness. But this week they included pleading, too. Oh yes. In times such as this past week prayer is asking, and asking is faith.

And the Lord always, always responds to faith. And then later when gratitude and relief flood us because what we want and pray for aligns with what God wants, well that is indescribable. Still, there have been times in my life when my prayers have not been answered the way I want. In those times faith becomes trusting.

The asking, the trusting. Such important factors in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. My life teaches me that God exists, and He has responded in both quiet and subtle ways. And then sometimes, for whatever His reasons, He grabs me and those close to me by the collar and intervenes directly and in dramatic ways.

Whatever way He chooses to show He is listening and in control I am so so grateful that He is there.

Feeling alittle exhausted. And feeling so much love for my beautiful daughter and our new little grandson.

It’s like every now and again we need reminders of our place in life, and just how fleeting life is.

Some pics from little Faye’s birthday party. I’m posting them because they are proof of a creative and loving mama who worked her guts out on this party. The untouched cake is sitting in the fridge, the decorations still hang, the presents unopened. A gentle reminder that things can change on a dime.*

How precious and tenuous life can be.

*See Megs own account on her blog.

jiaoanny

JLW sent these this morning. They are pics from the wedding celebration (even though they're not married yet, weird I know). They will both be here tomorrow. Yikes! So much to do still. Brig and Keny have been frantically painting in preparation.

These pics make me cry. They look good. And happy.

i can breathe again

We received our miracle. Megs blood levels are normal, her bleeding is under control and they are saying they will try her on solid food this afternoon. Considering where she was and where she's been this is a miracle. As ld posted over at the Grandparentals, they surprised Meghan by bringing her baby up to see her. Truly a tender moment, not a dry eye to be found. He could only stay for 15 minutes before they whisked him back to NICU, but for both mother and baby this was a definite morale booster.

Can't thank you all enough for your fasting and prayers. Our pleas were heard and she has according to her Doctor, turned the corner.

please join us

We are starting a collective fast for Meghan and her baby today. Please family and friends join us. I know for a fact that there is strength and efficacy in combined faith, fasting and prayers. I will update and keep you all posted.

She continues to be upbeat and we are confident with each passing hour she will get stronger and her blood levels will rise. They are taking out the balloon this morning, pray all goes well there and she doesn't lose any more blood.

Baby boy started on some meds to help his heart. Kody said nothing wrong structurally but the valves of his heart still think he is in the womb and not opening right. Doctors said meds will help with this. He is 7 weeks early, but really doing well considering.

Kody's parents drove all night and arrived in town around a couple hours ago. So grateful as I think Kody is a bit 'shell-shocked' and needs them. Faye is being well taken care of, we've managed to keep her at home as routine is best for her.

Thanks to all of you, we feel your prayers. Your support and strength has been such a blessing.

And to my dear brothers, you are simply the best.

This is all a bit too much deja vu, but I know God is a god of miracles and can intervene. He already has in so many ways.

grammatically correct

In college my Mom used to send back my letters with the punctuation and grammar corrected. She took her red ink teacher pen and circled inaccuracies and spelled out any misspelled words. About once a week, when I received a new letter from her, my last one to her would be tucked in. I never thought this was odd as she was a grammar nazi and well it was just Mother.
Woo whee she must be rolling her eyes now. Sorry Mom. I'm letting everyone know you taught me better.

A reminder then:

Your vs. You’re
This one drove her insane, so I don’t make this mistake too often.

“Your” is a possessive pronoun, as in “your cat” or “your blog.” “You’re” is a contraction for “you are,” as in “you’re showing how dumb you are by using your when you really mean you are.”

It’s vs. Its
This used to drive her bonkers too and she would always say it’s easily avoided by thinking through what it is you’re trying to say.
“It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” “Its” is a possessive pronoun, as in “this blog has lost its charm.” An easy rule of thumb—repeat your sentence out loud using “it is” instead. If that sounds weird, “its” is likely the correct choice.

There vs. Their
“There” is used many ways, often as a reference to a place (“let’s go there”) or as a pronoun (“there is no Halloween candy left”). “Their” is a plural possessive pronoun, as in “their bags” or “their opinions.” Do the “that’s ours!” test—are you talking about more than one person and something that they possess? If so, “their” will get you there.

Affect vs. Effect
Ld is always hollering to me from his computer on this one. Candy, which one do I use?

“Affect” is a verb, as in “Your ability to study will affect your grades immensely.” “Effect” is a noun, as in “The effect of a parent’s education on a child’s future is well documented.” By thinking in terms of “the effect,” you can usually sort out which is which, because you can’t stick a “the” in front of a verb. While some people do use “effect” as a verb (“a strategy to effect a settlement”), it’s usually found in legalese, so ignore, real people don’t write like that.

The Dangling Participle
Whenever I made this error I could count on my mother writing in the margin “try to be more clear, dear”
Ha! Your opening phrase should always modify what immediately follows. If it doesn’t, you’ve left the participle dangling, and will confuse your readers.

I think the reason why I have poor grammatical and punctuational discipline is because I am lazy and relied so much on my mother. I could always count on her to know the rules. Lame excuses, I know.

And I am the worst at periods. They always go within quotation marks. Which means I need to seriously comb over this blog and correct all my inconsistencies on that score.

Sheesh, Mother. If the rules of heaven allow you to read my blog, perhaps you could leave any needed corrections in the comment section, eh?

Until then, I'll have to consult this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2664713/Associated-Press-AP-Style-Guide-the-basics

Wait here’s more:
http://www.xeromag.com/cheat.html